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Chapter1
DEATH, LIFE, AND LOVE

Life! Life again, and light, the sun and the fresh winds of
heaven, the perfect azure of a June sky, the perfume of the
passionate red blooms along the lips of the chasm, the
full-throated song of hidden birds within the wood to
eastward—life, beauty, love—such, the sunrise hour when Allan and
the girl once more stood side by side in the outer world, delivered
from the perils of the black Abyss.

Hardly more real than a disordered nightmare now, the terrible
fall into those depths, the captivity among the white barbarians,
the battles and the ghastly scenes of war, the labors, the perilous
escape.

All seemed to fall and fade away from these two lovers, all save
their joy in life and in each other, their longing for the
inevitable greater passion, pain and joy, their clear-eyed outlook
into the vast and limitless possibilities of the future, their
future and the world's.

And as they stood there, hand in hand beside the body of the
fallen patriarch—he whose soul had passed in peace, even at the
moment of his life's fulfilment, his knowledge of the sun—awe
overcame them both. With a new tenderness, mingled with reverent
adoration, Stern drew the girl once more to him.

Her face turned up to his and her arms tightened about his neck.
He kissed her brow beneath the parted masses of her wondrous hair.
His lips rested a moment on her eyes; and then his mouth sought
hers and burned its passion into her very soul.

Suddenly she pushed him back, panting. She had gone white; she
trembled in his clasp.

"Oh, your kiss—oh, Allan, what is this I feel?—it seems to choke
me!" she gasped, clutching her full bosom where her heart leaped
like a prisoned creature. "Your kiss—it is so different now! No,
no—not again—not yet!"

He released her, for he, too was shaking in the grip of new,
fierce passions.

"Forgive me!" he whispered. "I—I forgot myself, a moment. Not
yet—no, not yet. You're right, Beatrice. A thousand things are
pressing to be done. And love—must wait!"

He clenched his fists and strode to the edge of the chasm,
where, for a while, he stood alone and silent, gazing far down and
away, mastering himself, striving to get himself in leash once
more.

Then suddenly he turned and smiled.

"Come, Beta," said he. "All this must be forgotten. Let's get to
work. The whole world's waiting for us, for our labor. It's eager
for our toil!"

She nodded. In her eyes the fire had died, and now only the
light of comradeship and trust and hope glowed once again.

"Allan?"

"Yes?"

"Our first duty—" She gestured toward the body of the patriarch,
nobly still beneath the rough folds of the mantle they had drawn
over it.

He understood.

"Yes," murmured he. "And his grave shall be for all the future
ages a place of pilgrimage and solemn thought. Where first, one of
lost Folk issued again into the world and where he died, this shall
be a monument of the new time now coming to its birth.

"His grave shall lie here on this height, where the first sun
shall each day for ages fall upon it, supreme in its deep
symbolism. Forever it shall be a memorial, not of death, but life,
of liberty, of hope!"

They kept a moment's silence, then Stern added.

"So now, to work!" From the biplane he fetched the ax. With this
he cut and trimmed a branch from a near-by fir. He sharpened it to
a flat blade three or four inches across. In the deep red sand
along the edge of the Abyss he set to work, scooping the
patriarch's grave.

In silence Beatrice took the ax and also labored, throwing the
sand away. Together, in an hour, they had dug a trench sufficiently
deep and wide.

"This must do, for now," said Stern, looking up at last. "Some
time he shall have fitting burial, but for the present we can do no
more. Let us now commit his body to the earth, the Great Mother
which created and which waits always to give everlasting sleep,
peace, rest."

Together, silently, they bore him to the grave, still wrapped in
the cloak which now had become his shroud. Once more they gazed
upon the noble face of him they had grown to love in the long weeks
of the Abyss, when only he had understood them or seemed near.

"What is this, Allan?" asked the girl, touching a fine chain of
gold about the patriarch's neck, till now unnoticed.

Allan drew at the chain, and a small golden cylinder was
revealed, curiously carven. Its lightness told him it was
hollow.

"Some treasure of his, I imagine," judged he.

"Some record, perhaps? Oughtn't we to look?"

He thought a moment in silence, then detached the chain.

"Yes," said he. "It can't help him now. It may help us. He
himself would have wanted us to have it."

And into the pocket of his rough, brown cassock, woven of the
weed-fiber of the dark sea, he slid the chain and golden
cylinder.

A final kiss they gave the patriarch, each; then, carefully
wrapping his face so that no smallest particle of sand should come
in contact with it, stood up. At each other they gazed,
understandingly.

"Flowers? Some kind of service?" asked the girl.

"Yes. All we can do for him will be too little!"

Together they brought armfuls of the brilliant crimson and
purple blooms along the edge of the sands, where forest and barren
irregularly met; and with these, fir and spruce boughs, the longer
to keep his grave freshly green.

All about him they heaped the blossoms. The patriarch lay at
rest among beauties he never had beheld, colors arid fragrances
that to him had been but dim traditions of antiquity.

"I can't preach," said Stern. "I'm not that kind, anyway, and in
this new world all that sort of thing is out of place. Let's just
say good-by, as to a friend gone on a long, long journey."

Beatrice could no longer keep back her grief. Kneeling beside
the grave, she arranged the flowers and the evergreens, on which
her tears fell shining.

"Dust unto dust!" Stern said. "To you, oh Mother Nature, we give
back the body of this friend, your son. May the breeze blow gently
here, the sun shine warm, and the birds forever sing his requiem.
And may those who shall come after us, when we too sleep, remember
that in him we had a friend, without whom the world never again
could have hoped for any new birth, any life! To him we say
good-by—eternally! Dust unto dust; good-by!"

Stern, with his naked hands, filled the shallow grave and, this
done, rolled three large boulders onto it, to protect it from the
prowling beasts of the wild.

Beatrice returned. They strewed more flowers and green boughs,
and in silence stood a while, gazing at the lowlier bed of their
one friend on earth.

Suddenly Stern took her hand and drew her toward him.

"Come, come, Beatrice," said he, "he is not dead. He still lives
in our memories. His body, aged and full of pain, is gone, but his
spirit still survives in us—that indomitable sold which, buried
alive in blindness and the dark, still strove to keep alive the
knowledge and traditions of the upper world, hopes of attaining it,
and visions of a better time to be!

"Was ever greater human courage, faith or strength? Let us not
grieve. Let us rather go away strengthened and inspired by this
wonderful life that has just passed. In us, let all his hopes and
aspirations come to reality.

"His death was happy. It was as he wished it, Beatrice, for his
one great ambition was fully granted—to know the reality of the
upper world, the winds of heaven and the sun! Impossible for him to
have survived the great change. Death was inevitable and right. He
wanted rest, and rest is his, at last.

"We must be true to all he thought us, you and I—to all he
believed us, even demigods! He shall inspire and enlighten us, O my
love; and with his memory to guide us, faith and fortitude shall
not be lacking.

"Now, we must go. Work waits for us. Everything is yet to be
planned and done. The world and its redemption lie before us.
Come!"

He led the girl away. As by mutual understanding they returned
to where the biplane lay, symbol of their conquest of nature,
epitome of hopes.

Near it, on the edge of the Abyss, they rested, hand in hand. In
silence they sat thinking, for a space. And ever higher and more
warmly burned the sun; the breeze of June was sweet to them,
long-used to fogs and damp and dark; the boundless flood of light
across the azure thrilled them with aspiration and with joy.

Life had begun again for them and for the world, life, even
there in the presence of death. Life was continuing, developing,
expanding—life and its immortal sister, Love!

Chapter2
EASTWARD HO!

Practical matters now for a time thrust introspection, dreams
and sentiment aside. The morning was already half spent, and in
spite of sorrow, hunger had begun to assert itself; for since time
was, no two such absolutely vigorous and healthy humans had ever
set foot on earth as Beatrice and Allan.

The man gathered brush and dry-kye and proceeded to make a fire,
not far from the precipice, but well out of sight of the
patriarch's grave. He fetched a generous heap of wood from the
neighboring forest, and presently a snapping blaze flung its
smoke-banner down the breeze.

Soon after Beatrice had raided the supplies on board the
Pauillac—fish, edible seaweed, and the eggs of the strange birds of
the Abyss—and with the skill and speed of long experience was
getting an excellent meal. Allan meantime brought water from a
spring near by. And the two ate in silence, cross-legged on the
warm, dry sand.

"What first, now?" queried the man, when they were satisfied.
"I've been thinking of about fifteen hundred separate things to
tackle, each one more important than all the others put together.
How are we going to begin again? That's the question!"

She drew from her warm bosom the golden cylinder and chain.

"Before we make any move at all," she answered, "I think we
ought to see what's in this record—if it is a record. Don't
you?"

"By Jove, you're right! Shall I open it for you?"

But already the massively chased top lay unscrewed in her hand.
Within the cylinder a parchment roll appeared.

A moment later she had spread it on her knee, taking care not to
tear the ancient, crackling skin whereon faint lines of writing
showed.

Stern bent forward, eager and breathless. The girl, too, gazed
with anxious eyes at the dim script, all but illegible with age and
wear.

"You're right, Allan," said she. "This is some kind of record,
some direction as to the final history of the few survivors after
the great catastrophe. Oh! Look, Allan—it's fading already in the
sunlight. Quick, read it quick, or we shall lose it all!"

Only too true. The dim lines, perhaps fifteen hundred years old,
certainly never exposed to sunlight since more than a thousand,
were already growing weaker; and the parchment, too, seemed
crumbling into dust. Its edges, where her fingers held it, already
were breaking away into a fine, impalpable powder.

"Quick, Allan! Quick!"

Together they read the clumsy scrawl, their eyes leaping along
the lines, striving to grasp the meaning ere it were too late.

TO ANY WHO AT ANY TIME MAY EVER REVISIT THE UPPER WORLD: Be it
known that two records have been left covering our history from the
time of the cataclysm in 1920 till we entered the Chasm in 1957.
One is in the Great Cave in Medicine Bow Range, Colorado, near the
ruins of Dexter. Exact location, 106 degrees, 11 minutes, 3 seconds
west; 40 degrees, 22 minutes, 6 seconds north. Record is in left,
or northern branch of Cave, 327 yards from mouth, on south wall, 4
feet 6 inches from floor. The other—

"Where? Where?" cried Beatrice. A portion of the record was
gone; it had crumbled even as they read.

"Easy does it, girl! Don't get excited," Allan cautioned, but
his face was pale and his hand trembled as he sought to steady and
protect the parchment from the breeze.

Together they pieced out a few of the remaining words, for now
the writing was but a pale blur, momently becoming dimmer and more
dim.

… Cathedral on … known as Storm King …
River … crypt under … this was agreed on … never
returned but may possibly … signed by us on this 12th
day …

They could read no more, for now the record was but a
disintegrating shell in the girl's hands, and even as they looked
the last of the writing vanished, as breath evaporates from a
window-pane.

Allan whirled toward the fire, snatched out a still-glowing
stick, and in the sand traced figures.

"Quick! What was that? 106-11-3, West—Forty—"

"Forty, 22, north," she prompted.

"How many seconds? You remember?"

"No." Slowly she shook her head. "Five, wasn't it?"

Eagerly he peered at the record, but every trace was gone.

"Well, no matter about the seconds," he judged. "I'll enter
these data on our diary, in the Pauillac, anyhow. We can remember
the ruins of Dexter and Medicine Bow Range; also the cathedral on
Storm King. Put the fragments of the parchment back into the case,
Beta. Maybe we can yet preserve them, and by some chemical means or
other bring out the writing again. As it is, I guess we've got the
most important facts; enough to go on, at any rate."

She replaced the crumbled record in the golden cylinder and once
more screwed on the cap. Allan got up and walked to the aeroplane,
where, among their scanty effects, was the brief diary and set of
notes he had been keeping since the great battle with the
Lanskaarn.

Writing on his fish-skin tablets, with his bone stylus, dipped
in his little stone jar of cuttle-fish ink, he carefully recorded
the geographical location. Then he went back to Beatrice, who still
sat in the midmorning sunlight by the fire, very beautiful and dear
to him.

"If we can find those records, we'll have made a long step
toward solving the problem of how to handle the Folk. They aren't
exactly what one would call an amenable tribe, at best. We need
their history, even the little of it that the records must contain,
for surely there must be names and events in them of great value in
our work of trying to bring these people to the surface and
recivilize them."

"Well, what's to hinder our getting the records now?" she asked
seriously, with wonder in her gray and level gaze.

"That, for one thing!"

He gestured at the Abyss.

"It's a good six or seven hundred miles wide, and we already
know how deep it is. I don't think we want to risk trying to cross
it again and running out of fuel en route! Volplaning down to the
village is quite a different proposition from a straight-away
flight across!"

She sat pensive a moment.

"There must be some way around," said she at last. "Otherwise a
party of survivors couldn't have set out for Storm King on the
Hudson to deposit a set of records there!"

"That's so, too. But—remember? 'Never returned.' I figure it
this way: A party of the survivors probably started for New York,
exploring. The big, concrete cathedral on Storm King—it was new in
1916, you remember—was known the country over as the most massive
piece of architecture this side of the pyramids. They must have
planned to leave one set of records there, in case the east, too,
was devastated. Well—"

"Do you suppose they succeeded?"

"No telling. At any rate, there's a chance of it. And as for
this Rocky Mountain cache, that's manifestly out of the question,
for now."

"So then?" she queried eagerly.

"So then our job is to strike for Storm King. Incidentally we
can revisit Hope Villa, our bungalow on the banks of the Hudson.
It's been a year since we left it, almost—ten months, at any rate.
Gad! What marvels and miracles have happened since then, Beta—what
perils, what escapes! Wouldn't you like to see our little nest
again? We could rest up and plan and strengthen ourselves for the
greater tasks ahead. And then—"

He paused, a change upon his face, his eyes lighting with a
sudden glow. She saw and understood; and her breast rose with
sudden keen emotion.

"You mean," whispered she, "in our own home?"

"Where better?"

She paled as, kneeling beside her, he flung a powerful arm about
her, and pulled her to him, breathing heavily.

"Don't! Don't!" she forbade. "No, no, Allan—there's so much work
to do—you mustn't!"

To her a vision rose of dream-children—strong sons and daughters
yet unborn. Their eyes seemed smiling, their fingers closing on
hers. Cloudlike, yet very real, they beckoned her, and in her
stirred the call of motherhood—of life to be. Her heart-strings
echoed to that harmony; it seemed already as though a tiny head,
downy—soft, was nestling in her bosom, while eager lips quested,
quested.

"No, Allan! No!"

Almost fiercely she flung him back and stood up.

"Come!" said she. "Let us start at once. Nothing remains for us
to do here. Let us go—home!"

An hour later the Pauillac spiralled far aloft, above the edge
of the Abyss, then swept into its eastward tangent, and in swift,
droning flight rushed toward the longed-for place of dreams, of
rest, of love.

Before them stretched infinities of labor and tremendous
struggle; but for a little space they knew they now were free for
this, the consummation of their dreams, of all their hopes, their
happiness, their joy.

Chapter3
CATASTROPHE!

Toward five o'clock next afternoon, from the swooping back of
the air-dragon they sighted a far blue ribbon winding among wooded
heights, and knew Hudson once more lay before them.

The girl's heart leaped for joy at thought of once again seeing
Hope Villa, the beach, the garden, the sun-dial—all the thousand
and one little happy and pleasant things that, made by them in the
heart of the vast wilderness, had brought them such intimate and
unforgetable delight.

He smiled and nodded, watchful at the wheel, and swung the
biplane a little to southward, in the direction where he judged the
bungalow must lie.

Weary they both were, yet full of life and strength. The trip
from the chasm had been tedious, merely a long succession of hours
in the rushing air, with unbroken forest, hills, lakes, rivers, and
ever more forest steadily rolling away to westward like a vast
carpet a thousand feet below.

No sign of man, no life, no gap in nature's all-embracing sway.
Even the occasional heap of ruins marking the grave of some
forgotten city served only to intensify the old half-terror they
had felt, when flying for the first time, at thought of the
tremendous desolation of the world.

The shining plain of Lake Erie had served the first day as a
landmark to keep them true to their course.

That night they had stopped at the ruins of Buffalo, where they
had camped in the open, and where next morning Stern had fully
replenished his fuel-tanks with the usual supplies of alcohol from
the debris of two or three large drug-stores.

From Buffalo eastward, over almost the same course along which
the hurricane of ten months ago had driven them, battling at random
with the gale, they steered by the compass. Toward mid-morning they
saw a thin line of smoke arising in the far north, answered by
still another on the hills beyond, but to these signs they gave no
heed.

Already they had seen and scorned them during their first stay
at the bungalow. They felt that nothing more was to be seriously
feared from such survivors of the Horde as had escaped the great
Battle of the Tower—a year and a half previously.

"Those chaps won't bother us again; I'm sure of that!" said
Allan, nodding toward the smoke-columns that rose, lazily blue, on
the horizon. "The scare we threw into them in Madison Forest will
last them one while!"

Still in this confident, defiant mood it was that they sighted
the river again and watched it rapidly broaden as the Pauillac, in
a long series of flat arcs, spurned the June air and whirled them
onward toward their goal.

Nearer the Hudson drew, and nearer still; and now its untroubled
azure, calm save for a few cat's-paws of breeze that idled on the
surface, stretched almost beneath them in their rapid flight.

"We're still a little too far north, I see," the man judged, and
swept the biplane round to southward.

The ruins of Newburgh lay presently upon their right. Soon after
the crumbled walls of West Point's pride slid past in silence, save
for the chatter of the engines, the whirling roar of the
propeller-blades' vast energy.

No boat now vexed the flood. Upon its bosom neither steam nor
sail now plowed a furrow. Along the banks no speeding train flung
its smoke-pennant to the wind. Primeval silence, universal calm,
wrapped all things.

Beatrice shuddered slightly. Now that they were nearing "home"
the desolation seemed more appalling.

"Oh, Allan, is it possible all this will ever be peopled
again—alive?"

"Certain to be! Once we get those records and begin
transplanting the Merucaans, the rest will be only a matter of
time!"

She made no answer, but in her eyes shone pride that he could
know such visions, have such faith.

Already they recognized the ruins of Nyack, and beyond them the
point in the river behind which, they knew, lay Hope Villa,
nestling in its gardens, its little sphere of cultivation hewn from
the very heart of the dense wilderness.

Allan slackened speed, crossed to the eastern bank, and jockeyed
for a safe landing.

The point slipped backward and away. There, right ahead, they
caught a glimpse of the long white beach where they had fished and
bathed and built their boat-house, and whence in their little yawl
they had ten months before started on their trip of exploration—a
trip destined to end so strangely in the Abyss.

Already the great plane was swooping downward toward the beach,
hardly a mile away, when a harsh shout escaped the man.

"Look! Canoes! My God—what—"

As the drive of the Pauillac opened up the concave of the sand
and brought its whole length to view, Stern and the girl suddenly
became aware of trouble.

There, strung along the beach irregularly, they all at once made
out ten, twenty, thirty boats. Still afar, they could see these
were the same rough bancas such as they had seen after the
battle—bancas in one of which they two had escaped up-river!

"Boats! The Horde again!"

Even as he shouted a tiny, black, misshapen little figure ran
crouching out onto the sand. Another followed and a third, and now
a dozen showed there, very distinct and hideous, upon the white
crescent.

Stern's heart went sick within him A terrible rage welled up—a
hate such as he had never believed possible to feel.

Wild imprecations struggled to be voiced. He snapped his lips
together in a thin line, his eyes narrowed, and his face went
gray.

"The infernal little beasts!" he gritted. "Tried to trap us in
the tower—cut our boat loose afterward—and now invading us! Don't
know when they're licked, the swine!"

Beatrice had lost her color now. Milk-white her face was; her
eyes grew wide with terror; she strove to speak, but could not.

Her hand went out in a wild, repelling gesture, as though by the
very power of her love for home she could protect it now against
the incursion of these foul, distorted, inhuman little
monsters.

Stern acted quickly. He had been about to cut off power and
coast for the beach; but now he veered suddenly to eastward again,
rotated the rising-plane, and brought the Pauillac up at a sharp
tilt. Banking, he advanced the spark a notch; the engine shrilled a
half-tone higher, and with increased speed the aero lifted them
bravely in a long and rising swoop.

He snatched his automatic from its holster on his hip and as the
plane swept past the beach, down-stream, let fly a spatter of steel
jacketed souvenirs at the fast-thickening pack on the sand.

Far up to the girl and him, half heard through the clatter of
the motors, they sensed a thin, defiant, barbarous yell—a yapping
chorus, bestial and horrible.

Again Stern fired.

He could see quick spurts of water jet up along the edge of the
sand, and one of the creatures fell, but this was only a chance
shot.

At that distance, firing from a swift-skimming plane, he knew he
could do no execution, and with a curse slid the pistol back again
into its place.

"Oh, for a dirigible and a few Pulverite bombs, same as we had
in the tower!" he wished. "I'd clean the blighters out mighty
quick!"

But now Beatrice was pointing, with a cry of dismay, down, away
at the bungalow itself, which had for a moment become visible at
the far end of the clearing as the Pauillac scudded past.

Even as Stern thought: "Odd, but they're not afraid of us—a
flying-machine means nothing to them, does not terrify them as it
would human savages. They're too debased even to feel fear!"—even
as this thought crossed his brain he, too, saw the terrible thing
that the girl had cried out at sight of.

"My God!" he shouted. "This—this is too much!"

All about the bungalow, their home, the scene of such happy
hours, so many dreams and hopes, such heart-enthralling labors,
hundreds of the Horde were swarming.

Like vicious parasites attacking prey, they overran the garden,
the grounds, even the house itself.

As in a flash, Stern knew all his work of months must be
undone—the fruit-trees he had rescued from the forest be cut down
or broken, the bulbs and roots in the garden uptorn, even the
hedges and fences trampled flat.

Worse still, the bungalow was being destroyed! Rather, its
contents, since the concrete walls defied the venomous troop.

They knew, at any rate, the use of fire, and not so swiftly
skimmed the Pauillac as to prevent both Stern and Beatrice seeing a
thin but ominous thread of smoke out-curling on the June air from
one of the living-room windows.

With an imprecation of unutterable hate and rage, yet impotent
to stay the ravishment of Hope Villa, Stern brought the machine
round in a long spiral.

For a moment the wild, suicidal idea possessed him to land on
the beach, after all, and charge the little slate-blue devils who
had evidently piled all the furnishings together in the bungalow
and were now burning them.

He longed for slaughter now; he lusted blood—the blood of the
Anthropoid pack which from the beginning had hung upon his flank
and been as a thorn unto his flesh.

He seemed to feel the joy of rushing them, an automatic in each
hand spitting death, just as he had mown down the Lanskaarn in the
Battle of the Wall, down below in the Abyss. Even though he knew
the inevitable ends poisoned spear-thrust, a wound with one of
those terribly envenomed arrows—he felt no fear.

Revenge! If he could only feel its sweetness, death had no
terrors.

Common sense instantly sobered him and dispelled these vain
ideas. The bungalow, after all, was not vital to his future or the
girl's. Barring the set of encyclopedias on metal plates,
everything else could be replaced with sufficient labor. Only a
madman would risk a fight with such a Horde in company with a
woman.

Not now were he and Beatrice entrenched in a strong tower, with
terrible explosives. Now they were in the open, armed only with
revolvers. For the present there was no redress.

"Beta," cried he, "we're up against it this time for fair—and we
can't hit back!"

"Our bungalow! Our precious home!"

"I know." He saw that she was crying: "It's a rotten shame and
all that, but it isn't fatal."

He brought the Pauillac down-wind again, coasting high over the
bungalow, whence smoke now issued ever more and more thickly.

"We're simply hamstrung this time, that's all. Where those
devils have come from and how many there may be, God knows.
Thousands, perhaps; the woods may be full of em. It's lucky for us
they didn't attack while we were there!

"Now—well, the only thing to do is let 'em have their way for
the present. Eventually—"

"Oh, can't we ever get rid of the horrid little beasts for
good?"

"We can and will!" He spoke very grimly, soaring the machine
still higher over the river and once more coming round above the
upper end of the beach. "One of these days there's got to be a
final reckoning, but not yet!"

"So it's good-by to Hope Villa, Allan? There's no way?"

"It's good-by. Humanly speaking, none."

"Couldn't we land, blockade ourselves in the boat-house,
and—"

Her eyes sparkled with the boldness of the plan—its peril, its
possibilities. But Allan only shook his head.

"And expose the Pauillac on the beach?" he asked. "One good
swing with a war-club into the motor and then a week's siege and
slow starvation, with a final rush—interesting, but not practical,
little girl. No, no; the better part of valor is to recognize force
majeure and wait! Remember what we've said already? 'Je recule pour
mieux sauter?' Wait till we get a fresh start on these hell-hounds;
we'll jump 'em far enough!"

The bungalow now lay behind. The whole clearing seemed alive
with the little blue demons, like vermin crawling everywhere.
Thicker and thicker now the smoke was pouring upward. The scene was
one of utter desolation.

Then suddenly it faded. The plane had borne its riders onward
and away from the range of vision. Again only dense forest lay
below, while to eastward sparkled the broad reach where, in the
first days of their happiness at Hope Villa, the girl and Allan had
fished and bathed.

Her tears were unrestrained at last; but Allan, steadying the
wheel with one hand, drew an arm about her and kissed and comforted
her.

"There, there, little girl! The world's not ended yet, even if
they have burned up our home-made mission furniture! Come,
Beatrice, no tears—we've other things to think of now!"

"Where away, since our home's gone?" she queried pitifully.

"Where away? Why, Storm King, of course! And the cathedral and
the records, and—and—"